


nights at the hanged man

by evocativecomma



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocativecomma/pseuds/evocativecomma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>the ghosts that we knew </i>
  <br/>
  <i>will flicker from view</i>
  <br/>
  <i>and we'll live a long life</i>
</p><p> </p><p> Every night at the Hanged Man is the best night at the Hanged Man they've ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nights at the hanged man

Every night at the Hanged Man is the best night at the Hanged Man they've ever had. Corff's ale flows freely, Norah is easy with her smiles when she comes through the suite, and the echoes of their laughter linger long after everyone has slowly wandered off in groups of two or three, showing each other safely to their respective doorways before seeking their own beds.

Not that the suite at the Hanged Man is just _his_ any more. It stopped being his the first time Merrill got too drunk to follow her ball of twine home; when Fenris, standing far too steady on his feet to be as drunk as he claimed, bedded down in front of the fire on a floor clear of glass shards in a room empty of skeletons and fog; when Sebastian choked on the incense of the Chantry corridors. By the time Isabela's latest promising crew sailed off into the night without her, it had long since been _their_ suite, where even Aveline had taken refuge from the relentless battle of old wounds against what might have been guilt, but could have been love, too.

But if is anyone's--besides his and Bianca's, that is--it's _hers._

He has long since surrendered any illusions that the bed is his, at least. After the first time he'd pushed into the suite to find her curled up in a tight ball, murmuring small, frightened nothings in her sleep, she'd shown up with a bundle of quilts under her arm--Leandra's handiwork, she said, the result of many sleepless hours in front of the fire. After the opening of the Hightown estate, the nearly threadbare browns and greens were replaced by rich crimsons, violets and golds, lined and warmer than a Chantry brazier; as Orana slowly learned that she was family, the patterns got more ambitious, more involved.

There would be no more quilts; Orana found she could not bring herself to make them alone.

As she sleeps, he muses that there is something soft--nostalgic, maybe, for a future she had once dreamed--in her resting face that makes him think of the gentle country girl she could have been if the world were ever kind to good people. 

So they sleep, him in the armchair and her in the bed--even, occasionally, back to back under the quilts--one or two or seven knives within easy reach, just in case. 

"Strange bedfellows we make, don't you agree?"

Strange he certainly couldn'tdisagree with. But he'd definitely had worse.

 

* * *

Varric pushes open the main door of the Hanged Man and breathes deeply; most people, their first few times through the door, are knocked back by the wall of sound or the near-tangible force of the smell. The first time he'd brought Hawke, she'd turned an unflattering shade of green and staggered back, only to stumble forward with his hand on her back and turn a far more becoming shade of pink as the usual patrons noticed her entrance. 

It's been so long now that all he can think is: _We're home._

And then: _No,_ ** _I'm_** _home. Just me._

For a moment, he thinks there should be someone with him, but there is no one. His fingers curl around nothing but air until they cramp and he shakes his hand out with a hiss; his shouldersfeel strangely light.

"Varric!"

And there she is. Just the way he remembers her. It's been so long that there's an ache in his chest; she had gone somewhere, but--no, that can't be right. They're meeting in the Hanged Man for Wicked Grace tonight, so he saw her just yesterday, cleaning out a nest of bandits on the Wounded Coast for Aveline. He thinks, sometimes, that it's good stories need so much embellishment to keep them healthy, because there's a chance he'll forget the truth of it anyway.

She's laughing, pushing herself up to her towering height and throwing her head back in that floor-shaking guffaw she has, cropped red hair sticking up in every direction. When she turns her face back to him, the firelight catches the dark brown of her skin, the violet highlights of the birdlike tattoo across her cheekbones and the straight planes of her nose and she _glows,_ every inch the dazzling hero he's made her out to be. She smiles with her mouthful of crooked teeth and Varric's crooked heart gives an affectionate squeeze; he always tells people about her teeth, too many of them crammed into that narrow jaw--it's the kind of detail that makes her real to them no matter what tall tales he's telling that day.

He loves her face. He has missed it beyond all the words he could ever write, stubborn chin and golden eyes and everything--she is exactly the way he remembers her. From...yesterday.

"Hawke," he says, tries to say, but his voice is withered in his throat and croaks like the hinges on Merrill's front door.

She reaches down beside her chair, hauls something up onto her shoulder and turns back to him. A crossbow. The image is wrong, shaken up with countless memories of her thin, calloused hands and the intricate staff routines she practiced in the courtyard of the estate. She is walking toward him with the head of the crossbow nestled tenderly against her neck, the length of it supported by her arm.

There's a flash of...something in his mind then. Fire, the groaning of super-heated gears, the crackling of oiled wood as it caught in the blaze. A woman beside him, trying to convince him and herself that _it's for the best, now that we can't protect it any more, there could only ever be one_ \--

_Bianca._

He remembers lifting Bianca in the practice yard, listening to the reverent whispers from the crowd as they stood together once again, Tethras and Lavellan, shooting targets for the hell of it while the children of the golden age looked on. He remembers the silver in her copper hair, the crow's feet branching into the great green tree across her face, the excited chatter of her grandchildren sitting in a ragged semi-circle in front of the crowd.

He remembers shooting wide. Shooting wide no matter how many bolts he loosed, his hands shaking around the stock, fingers jerking the trigger instead of squeezing lovingly the way he knows she needs.He remembers sending a raven to Orzammar for her namesake, hoping either his words or someone else's rumors will reach her— _Varric Tethras has lost his touch._ Hoping that for once she will be there when he needs her, instead of months after, instead of hating him for however they had last parted.

They lit the bonfire together, knowing it would be too dangerous to let her live in anyone else's hands.

He doesn't need a mirror to see the time-worn lines of his face or the iron-grey of his hair. He remembers his age then, feels it, curls his hands and feels the arthritis in his knuckles and his wrists. He feels the perpetual ache of his lower back and the stiffness of the shoulder that never quite recovered from the icy blast of the Kaltenzhan in the ass-end of Orlais.

He knows, he _knows_ , that if she is standing here holding Bianca out to him, there is something he has forgotten.

And then he remembers everything.

The great dragon and the vicious crack of stone beneath their feet, the sudden knowledge of _this, this is how it all ends_ , until he realized that it was coming from the opposite end of the battlements from where he was standing, the earth itself shaking until he tasted blood in his mouth from the unchecked chattering of his teeth. The blinding, breathless flash of green light and then it was all gone, before anyone could so much as shout. All of them, vanished.

Gone. Just gone.

It wasn't until later that he realized that his thoughts had not gone to her at all; they had survived so many impossible adventures to the end of the world and back that this was nothing, just another day. He thought only _not the kid, not the Seeker, not the Inquisitor—not Little Mother, with her bluebird laugh and her daredevil leaps and her flower chains, she's just a kid…_ Every thought for someone else. It had never occurred to him that she might not—

"Hawke." His voice creaks again as it slides around the knots in his throat, the violent twist that feels like a noose around him. " _Hawke._ "

Those gold eyes melt into the warmest smile he's ever seen and suddenly there is nothing else. He pushes the crossbow from her arms and buries his face in her chest, arms tight around her middle; he has not wept like this since he was a child, but she wraps her arms around him without a word and they collapse to the floor together.

He doesn't know how long they sit there, close enough that their breaths mix and their heartbeats come in time, but when she brushes her long fingers over his brow he knows she is smoothing away the weight of a lifetime's worth of stories he has yet to share with her. When he speaks again, his voice is threaded with gold.

"Hawke." He picks himself up from the floor and examines his duster; he thinks, for a moment, that he'd been wearing something different when he'd walked through the door, but he brushes that thought away with the dust. He offers her a hand, trying to remember how they'd gotten to the floor in the first place. He clears his throat.

"I've been waiting for you for a long time."

"What are you talking about, Hawke? I saw you yesterday for hide-and-seek on the Coast."

She kisses his brow and hands him Bianca, unblemished and familiar in his hands.

Every night at the Hanged Man is the best night at the Hanged Man they've ever had, and already Varric is threading the spinning wheel for his latest tale, debating which deck of cards will be best for tonight's game of Wicked Grace. Hawke puts her arm around his shoulders.

They climb the stairs.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just. Really sorry.
> 
> Mostly my own feelings. Partly inspired by "Ghosts That We Knew," partly by "When I See You Again," and partly by [this piece](http://cccrystalclear.tumblr.com/post/123728221805/its-been-a-long-day-without-you-my-friend-and) by cccrystalclear on tumblr.
> 
> The headcanon that Bianca is burned when Varric can no longer use her is my own; it seemed appropriately practical and reverent. 
> 
> The Champion used is my own Nella Hawke, and the Inquisitor mentioned is my Aiwë Lavellan. I tried to write it with a general character so you could imagine your own, but it didn't work as well for me.
> 
> Come visit me on tumblr at [shootthewendybird](http://shootthewendybird.tumblr.com)!


End file.
